Yonkers temporarily shutters X2O restaurant amid financial squabble

YONKERS – Fire officials briefly shuttered Peter Kelly’s X2O Xaviars on the Hudson for sprinkler violations—the city’s latest scrape with the restaurant it says is in arrears for half a million dollars.

Mayor Mike Spano’s spokeswoman, Christina Gilmartin, said Monday that the eatery’s sprinklers were fixed soon after the Fire Department issued the violations this past week.

The mix-up comes as the city separately moves to collect backdue payments totaling more than $500,000 from the restaurant for its electrical usage over the past several years. (There was no indication that this financial controversy is in any way related to the code violations.)

For most of the five years since X2O opened, the city has paid for its electrical usage at a discount as part of the metered charges applied to the entire city-owned pier where the restaurant is housed, Gilmartin said.

Under that deal brokered by former Mayor Phil Amicone’s administration, X2O was supposed to reimburse the city for its share of the electrical bill. But Spano, the current mayor, discovered shortly after taking office Jan. 1 that “that was not happening,” Gilmartin said.

The city has since set up a separate electrical meter for X2O and will soon be sending out a final notice of default, Gilmartin said.

The restaurant could not be reached for comment late Monday. Stay tuned.